Help Your Gym Clients Start Exercising with these 30-Day Beginners Workout Challenges

Starting something new is challenging! This is especially true when it comes to establishing a new fitness routine. If it was easy, people wouldn’t make fitness resolutions year-in and year-out. 

As with any difficult task, it’s easier if you break it down into small steps. This is why a 30-day beginner’s challenge can be perfect for clients at the start of their fitness journey. It’s a small chunk of time, no major commitment, and one that can pass in the blink of an eye.

Let’s take a closer look at what a 30-day workout challenge is and how you can help your clients get the most out of one of these common fitness challenges.

What is a 30-Day Workout Challenge?

A 30-day workout challenge is an exercise program that consists of daily workouts designed to help people work towards their fitness goals in just one month. It aims to help them create a consistent exercise routine over the course of a month, to help people build healthy habits that feel sustainable.

If you search online for this style of fitness challenge, you’ll find dozens of different options. What they have in common (other than their length) is that they typically consist of different exercises tailored to meet people’s individual fitness goals. They can include strength training, cardio, core exercises, and stretching routines suitable for beginners.

Example 30-Day Beginner’s Workout Challenges

There are lots of popular beginner’s workout challenges. You might prefer to develop your own from scratch tailored to a client’s goals or your gym offers. Alternatively, you can start with a plan already out there and customize it to fit your brand. T

No matter your focus, there are 30-day challenges out there for you, whether you’re looking for strength workouts, full body workouts, or High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) workouts. Some examples include:

• The complete 4-week beginner’s workout program – Muscle & Fitness
• 30-day quick-start exercise guide for beginners – Verywellfit
• 28-day workout for beginners (home workout without equipment!) – Runtastic
• 30 days of yoga – Yoga with Adriene
• The Men’s Health 30-day workout challenge – Men’s Health

Benefits of Doing a Beginner’s 30-Day Workout Challenge

Thirty-day workout challenges are a simple entry point into working out regularly. Let’s look at some of the benefits your clients might experience from completing one.

Build Healthy Habits

There’s an often-quoted statistic that it takes 21 days tobuild a new habit. Newer research suggests it could take an average of 66 days. Either way, building new habits takes a little time.

Completing a 30-day workout challenge sets the foundation for those new, healthier habits. People start doing a little bit of exercise every day for 30 days, which gets them past the 21-day mark and nearly halfway towards that 66-day milestone.

Short, Manageable Commitment

A 30-day workout challenge is, by definition, a pretty short commitment. It only takes 30 days to complete, so people aren’t committing to a months-long workout routine right from day one.

It can also help people stay motivated because their challenge has a clear end date. And then, after 30 days, they get the buzz of accomplishing their goals and finishing the challenge – positive feelings that encourage them to keep going.

Start Improving Fitness Levels

It’s hard to stick with something if you aren’t seeing results. Doing a 30-day workout challenge can help your clients start to see the benefits of regular exercise quickly. They may begin to lose weight and notice an increase in their strength, endurance, and energy levels.

Good Introduction to Building a Fitness Routine

For fitness newbies, getting started can be the biggest hurdle. They might worry they’re not fit enough for some of your regular group classes or feel intimidated about going to the gym. 

Most 30-day workout challenges are designed to be approachable no matter your fitness level, which help set people up for success. This helps people begin building regular exercise into their daily routine with as little friction as possible.

Tips for Making the Most Out of a 30-Day Workout Challenge

If your clients are starting a new exercise challenge, here are some tips you can share to set them up for success.

Set Realistic Goals

Setting goals can give your clients something to work towards, which gives them a sense of accomplishment. But not all goals are made equal. Saying ‘I’m going to run a marathon at the end of the month even though I’ve never done a 5k’ might sound inspirational, but it’s more likely to produce frustration than enduring fitness results.

Help your client set goals that are achievable within the timeframe of the challenge.If somebody says they want a six-pack by the end of a 30-day ab challenge, consider helping them set an intermediary goal, like progress from doing knee push ups to full sets.

Track Progress

People can track the challenge in a couple of different ways. The first level is activity: Are they doing the work daily? Encourage your clients to tick off each day they work out so they can see how far they’ve come.

The second level is their health and fitness progress. It’s advisable to help clients track success markers that will appear within a month. It’s unlikely, for example, that they’ll lose much weight in such a short timeframe. It’s better to focus your conversation on signs of progress like how many sets they complete in a day or how much weight they lift during each session.

Make it Fun

This is one of the top tips the American Heart Association gives people getting started with exercise.

If your client’s looking for a 30-day beginner’s workout challenge, chances are they’re just starting to build their health and fitness routine. It’s easy to put people off early on by making them do things that feel like a chore.

Where possible, help them find challenges that relate to activities they enjoy. For example, if they love playing soccer, you could find a workout plan to help with coordination or ball control. Or if they love dancing, focus on flexibility or workouts to music.

If you can plan a challenge that feels like fun, it’ll make it easier for clients to stick with the program, even when motivation starts to wane.

Build it Into Their Existing Routine

When someone starts a daily challenge like this, finding space for it in their day can be difficult. Building the impetus to exercise based on their existing habits makes it easier to plan when to fit a workout in.

This concept is known ashabit stacking, and it relies on “linking your new habits to a cycle that is already built into your brain.” Your client might, for example, decide to put their sneakers on when they kick their slippers off after morning coffee, or meditate while walking their dog. People are creatures of habit, so the idea is new habits are more likely to stick around if they are built on pre-existing ones. The ultimate goal is one habit triggers another, making the new habit (in this case, a fitness activity) an automatic part of somebody’s daily routine.

Provide Support

Look for ways you can cheer on your client as they work through their 30-day challenge! Having support always makes it easier to complete something difficult. This could be a weekly social media post congratulating everyone who made it through another week of the challenge. Or, if you have a few clients interested in doing beginners’ workout challenges, you could have them partner up to complete the challenge together. That gives them a new workout buddy and accountability partner who will motivate and encourage them throughout the process.

Got a 30-Day Beginner’s Workout Challenge Planned? Now Find Your Clients

A 30-day workout challenge is an effective way for people to jumpstart their fitness journey, so it’s no surprise they’re popular with fitness newbies. Seventy percent of Wellhub members are signing up for a fitness membership for the first time – that’s a lot of potential participants in your beginner’s workout challenge! 

And they aren’t participants you’ll have to find yourself — companies offer their employees access to Wellhub’ huge network of gyms, classes, and training programs as part of their employee benefits package. Sound like a good fit for you? Learn more about becoming a Wellhub partner today!

References

• Clear, James. How Long Does it Actually Take to Form a New Habit? (Backed by Science). Accessed March 1, 2023 from https://jamesclear.com/new-habit 
• Getting Started – Tips for Long-term Exercise Success. American Heart Association. Last reviewed April 18, 2018. Accessed March 1, 2023 from https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/fitness/getting-active/getting-started—tips-for-long-term-exercise-success 
• Clear, James. How to Build New Habits by Taking Advantage of Old Ones. Accessed March 1, 2023 from https://jamesclear.com/habit-stacking